According to voting records, the woman is a registered Democrat, although it’s unknown if she voted for Obama.

Reacting to the news of the woman’s party affiliation, Johnson says in comments:

This picture has been around since 2008, and it shows up exclusively on right wing mailing lists and websites. It’s ridiculous to try to deny that this is an example of right wing racism — the message of a black man shining Sarah Palin’s shoes could not possibly be more obvious.

And it doesn’t matter if the woman in this case is registered Democrat or not. This is not something a supporter of Barack Obama would send to anyone.

Ah, but one need not be a right-winger to oppose Obama. Maybe the woman was a Hillary supporter. Maybe she is an ardent Democrat who feels that Obama has been insufficiently pugnacious in responding to Palin’s attacks on his health care plan. Or maybe she’s just an old racist who likes forwarding pictures of black guys shining other people’s shoes.

Whatever her motivation, Johnson ought to update his post to note that the “right-wing racism” he denounces was a picture forwarded by a Democrat. That’s not asking too much, is it?

But unfortunately, it’s a simple fact that this picture did originate from the right wing, regardless of this particular woman’s party affiliation — as I show in the links posted immediately above. I have yet to discover it at a single left wing site, except as part of a post denouncing the racism of the right wing. So the idea that this is somehow a “left wing” image is completely silly.

However, the links he provides demonstrate no such thing. We don’t know where the picture originated from. and Charles’s links don’t begin to answer that question.

Now: the use of the picture by any particular person may or may not be racist, depending on the context. This fellow here uses the picture as part of an array of anti-Obama imagery, including a picture of a black-faced Obama with a gleaming white smile, holding a plate of fried chicken and watermelon, accompanied by a caption reading: “Lawdy! I sho’ loves campainnin’!” Dare I say it? That guy is a racist.

As for the Democrat who forwarded the picture in Colorado . . . I’m not sure what her motivation was. But her status as a registered Democrat cannot be ignored. Charles is right to update his post, and he should have done so before I pressured him to.

Does this mean that no right-wingers have used this image in a racist way? Of course not, as the above link shows. But Charles: until you’re ready to actually prove where the image originated, please don’t claim that you have done so. It’s this kind of overstatement that runs you into trouble.

UPDATE x2: Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link. He calls this Photoshop “racist.” I wonder if readers here agree with him. Feel free to discuss that issue in the comments.

UPDATE x3: I have been banned at Little Green Footballs for writing this post. Details here.

UPDATE x4: This has obviously happened to a lot of other people. I’m asking people to tell their own stories about being banned at LGF here.

UPDATE: Or is it racist? Rush Limbaugh actually was a shoeshine boy. Yeah the racial stereotype is a bit shaky — when I was a kid I knew older brothers of friends who did that; even in Birmingham, Alabama they were white. By the time I was a teenager, of course, shoeshines were on the way out.

Well, as I said above, context is key; the fellow who included it on his web site alongside a “Lawdy! I sho’ loves campainnin’!” Photoshop is clearly a racist, and almost certainly reveled in the racial stereotype on display in the Photoshop.

STILL MORE: Okay, reader Michael Demmons thinks I’m excusing racism here. Well, my first reaction here was that the pic was racist; I was trying to be fair by noting Maguire’s response. I still think the pic was racist, but now that every criticism of Obama is called racist, I suppose I’ve gotten jaded …

UPDATE x7: I tend to agree with Prof. Reynolds that the Photoshop is racist. Whether the picture was originally Photoshopped by a Republican or a Democrat, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where the creation of that image was not rooted in racist stereotypes to some extent.

Nor am I persuaded by the argument that This White Guy or That White Guy was a shoeshine boy. Go back to the link above that I labeled racist, and find the Photoshop of Obama holding fried chicken and watermelon. Lots of white people like those foods, too — but that doesn’t make the image any less obviously racist.

What’s the worst is the assertion being advanced by Johnson with his defense. Racist depictions of blacks are “right-wing.” Racism has no political connotation despite what demagogues like Charles Johnson obviously so fervently believe. It doesn’t matter if it was a Democrat who made the image, or if it was a Democrat who distributed it, or if it was mostly Democrats receiving the image. Racism is right-wing, period. If a racist is a Democrat than obviously they are lying to themselves or everyone else because racism is right-wing.

Godwin should just be invoked, Johnson has become quite the little Goebbels. First you lie about something in order to lie about someone, then you keep repeating it over and over. It doesn’t matter how you have to twist yourself into knots, how much you have to lie, if you’re Charles Johnson you are desperately trying to attract liberals to your website since its popularity has gone off a cliff since he himself went over a cliff. Apparently Johnson’s intellect is so limited that he can’t find a way to attract liberals to his site other than to behave like a Kos or DU poster (or John Cole).

I feel bad about Charles. He got a short period of well deserved fame for demonstrating the fake Bush TANG memo, although he was not the one who figured out the ploy. That was an anonymous attorney in Georgia who posted on Free Republic. Since then, Charles has had a reputation as conservative but that was not deserved. He supported the Iraq War for a while but many of his other interests are quite far from conservative. Then, about a year ago, he got into a constant frenzy about fundamentalist Christians and creationism. I am no fan of creationism but LGF became unreadable the past year and a half. I was a registered member but I rarely look at it anymore.

I don’t think it says she’s racist, chaos. Race is a red herring here. I think the picture asserts she has a rather higher opinion of herself than deserved. I think this is a point on which it’s uncontroversial to note that she is vulnerable.

Charles made the error of believing all the praise of him in comments was justified. Only Barry Bond’s head ever swelled more than his. (And he had massive amounts of drugs in his system to explain it.) Charles actually has to contort himself into pretzels on every issue now to try to stay “consistent”. The fact that this is failing, no matter how nimble his wordsmithing, is painful to read. Anyone “turning liberal” in these times needs psychiatric monitoring. NTTAWWT

I don’t think it says she’s racist, chaos. Race is a red herring here. I think the picture asserts she has a rather higher opinion of herself than deserved. I think this is a point on which it’s uncontroversial to note that she is vulnerable.

I have friends like CJ. My friends are good people, but they NEVER, EVER, EVER admit they are wrong, they live a life of denial based on personal inviolability.

CJ, suffers the curse of mediocrity. He has attained a level of success through being mediocre in a few things, so that must mean he’s Shit Hot AWESOME! in all other things, and if anyone dare challenge him on his inconsistencies and his failures, then you are a poopie head.

I don’t think he’s a bad person, I just think he is in a near constant state of denial, It’s a shame really, he would be much better than he is (which isn’t that much) if he could ever acknowledge his own failings, rather than creating 3rd, 4th and 5th party comparisons of blame against those who disagree with him.

The person who originally sent the e-mail, who isn’t a state employee, wrote “It appears he (Obama) has found his niche.”

So if it’s *about* Obama then it’s reasonable to conclude that it’s in *support* of Palin. And if that’s the case then I don’t think you can say for sure that the original sender wasn’t a right-wing racist. It seems sort of not implausible that the original sender was a bit of a right-wing racist… but they’re not absolved of the possibility just cause the picture was eventually sent to a sympathetic Democrat.

Patterico, you fool, she can’t be a real Democrat. Don’t you know that anyone who makes fun of Obama is by definition right-wing?? You. Are. Banned!!! /pause to allow sharmuta to wipe the spittle off my lips
–Charles Emerson Lizardsex III

So if it’s *about* Obama then it’s reasonable to conclude that it’s in *support* of Palin.

No it isn’t.

It seems sort of not implausible that the original sender was a bit of a right-wing racist… but they’re not absolved of the possibility just cause the picture was eventually sent to a sympathetic Democrat.

“It seems Obama has found his niche” sounds more like some moonbat pissed off that Obama hasn’t declared us to be the USSR: The Sequel yet. That’s a much more reasonable conclusion than what you’re giving us.

Pretty sure the joke is “look at Obama shining Palin’s shoes, he’s selling out to Palin in the picture just he’s like sold out to the banks and the pharmaceutical industry.” Obama being a kloset korporatist is about as big on the Left as Obama being a kloset kommie is on the Right.

Honestly I don’t see how this could come from anywhere but the Left, you have to complicate (aka twist, distort, etc.) things incredibly to try to say that the picture is anti-Obama from a right-wing perspective. However, from a left-wing perspective, there’s a very simple and reasonable explanation. Occam’s Razor, blah blah blah, this picture originated from a Left-winger I would put money on it.

My only point was that I think the picture is more effective at poking at the grandiosity of Palin’s ambitions than at poking at Obama’s fitness for menial jobs.

Well then it has to be said that that thinking is of little to no quality.

But really, if we accept your framing of the debate, then yes, if we had to choose between “poking fun at Palin’s ambitions” and “Obama is only fit for menial jobs,” you make sense. But those aren’t the only choices, so unless you’re going to tell us that you made the original picture, let’s not substitute what you wish the picture meant for what it means.

Then why is Palin in the picture at all, chaos? Obama could have been shining anyone’s shoes.

As much as I enjoy the game of “if you can’t satisfy my every question it means I’m right,” I’m not going to be playing. Why wouldn’t Palin be there? She’s replaced George W. Bush as the face the Left puts up on the telescreen for the Two Minutes’ Hate. She is the symbol of right-wing kkkorporate Rethuglicanism. If you believe Obama has sold out to the kkkorporations… you can connect the dots from there I think.

I’m not arguing the intent, Scott. It matters with respect to what happens to the employee, but… simply put I think circulating this picture is to the detriment of Sarah Palin and not at all to the detriment of our little president man.

Jack’s point is probably closer to the gist of it. Sarah’s not one to particularly be waited on to any degree, yes she had accepted the wardrobe for the purpose stated, which was later used as a weapon against her, by staff desiring to burnish their pathetic reputations.

I just read through all of LGF comments on this picture and conclude that, yes, it is indeed too much to ask Mr. Johnson to note that the sender is a Democrat.

If he did, it would cause his bubble of contempt for the right to deflate just a bit. And where’s the righteous indignation in that?

Anyway, it’s ironic he is enraged by this paricular “ism”, while conveniently ignoring the insult to Palin: There is an obvious intent to depict Palin as the upper crust, successful white woman (classic Brooks Brother skirt/crisp white tailored blouse) who looks down (literally and perhaps, figuratively) at the lowly black man as he does the menial job of shining her Jimmy Choos. Palin has never been about classicism nor about being white.

Mr. Johnson also appears not to have a problem in his own comment section with the sexism toward Palin (Caribou Barbie).

Mr. Johnson is apparently not an equal opportunity denouncer of various “isms” – only the ones that nurture his own righteous indignation. But then again, how could we expect him to be as equally enraged at the negative insinuations of Mrs. Palin in the photo because after all, she’s just a Republican. And just a woman. And just a Christian. But she is not *black*.

“Anyway, it’s ironic he is enraged by this paricular “ism”, while conveniently ignoring the insult to Palin: There is an obvious intent to depict Palin as the upper crust, successful white woman (classic Brooks Brother skirt/crisp white tailored blouse) who looks down (literally and perhaps, figuratively) at the lowly black man as he does the menial job of shining her Jimmy Choos.”

Dana,

Can you explain how the “Obama has found his niche” caption fits this theory?

One recalls the amusing photoshop of Hillary and Obama naked post-coital relaxing on a sofa. Why is everything that touches on Baracky considered racist. What does it suggest when our esteemed media mostly appears to desire to fellate The One?

Gave up on the Big Lizard dude quite some time ago for a variety of reasons. Rick Moran and he both seem more like libtards to me. I do commend Johnson for helping expose the TANG lies though.

Why do so many people of all political stripes loathe Sarah Palin with such venom?

There was a time I enjoyed Johnson’s LGF. That time has passed. I’m not sure what the exact cause was, but there was a change in attitude and it was not a change for the good. Desperately snarky posters in search of some meaning in their lives and a Lizard King who is constantly looking to find offense in even the most mundane of events.

Patterico has discovered that the woman who’s in trouble for forwarding the racist image is registered as a Democrat, and he thinks I should update my post to note that — so I am: Charles Johnson Denounces the “Right-Wing Racism” of a Picture Forwarded by … a Democrat.

But unfortunately, it’s a simple fact that this picture did originate from the right wing, regardless of this particular woman’s party affiliation — as I show in the links posted immediately above. I have yet to discover it at a single left wing site, except as part of a post denouncing the racism of the right wing. So the idea that this is somehow a “left wing” image is completely silly.

Can you explain how the “Obama has found his niche” caption fits this theory?

Well who can know for sure if that is a caption put there by the creator of the image, or just by whoever e-mailed it to that Colorado state public employee.

I think the picture is intended to be a shot at Obama, playing off the Left’s intense hatred for Palin, trying to say through the image either that Obama has found his niche as a servant of the caricature of the Right the Left has in their minds (personified by Palin), or that he is only fit to shine the shoes of a horrible human being like Sarah Palin.

aoibhneas, thank you for an image I’ll have burn out of my skull with a torch, honestly, now it is a bit of a turn of direction, most photoshops, around
the time of her selection, were very sexist and
demeaning, I don’t need to elaborate

It’s ridiculous to try to deny that this is an example of right wing racism

And it’s ridiculous to deny all the examples of left wing racism, in which a liberal like, say, Charles Johnson often will be guilty of the bigotry of low expectations. Of juvenilizing non-white people (particularly black folks) and exploiting them merely because they and the white liberal share one thing in common: idiotic leftist politics.

BTW, when I see that phony image of Obama shining Palin’s shoes I’m reminded of the REAL-LIFE snapshots of Obama bowing before the King of Saudi Arabia and then, several months later, the Emperor of Japan. Prior to those instances of totally inappropriate, pathetic prostration actually occurring, I’d have assumed if the current occupant of the White House ever were depicted in an image of his bowing before anyone, it would have been doctored and probably created by a political foe of the guy.

But unfortunately, it’s a simple fact that this picture did originate from the right wing, regardless of this particular woman’s party affiliation — as I show in the links posted immediately above. I have yet to discover it at a single left wing site, except as part of a post denouncing the racism of the right wing. So the idea that this is somehow a “left wing” image is completely silly.

All the links show is that it was posted on “right-wing” websites allegedly approvingly and only posted on “left-wing” websites disapprovingly…

So the actual origin of the image is left unknown, but luckily we’ve got super-sleuth Charles Johnson on the case to tell us that his sophistry is an airtight argument.

Poor Charles, I remember back in the day when he was just so hurt by the unfair tactics of some who claimed that he himself was racist and all the rest because of some of the things his commenters said and images they linked to… Charles has of course transcended that experience and has now vaulted himself onto the exalted plane of Alinskyism, where the rules only apply to your enemies, and you are so moral and correct that the very idea of any rules or standards of decency applying to you is an affront to sensibility.

Also, anything involving John Cole and his execrable site and ‘classiness’ is a chunk of irony bigger than the earth itself. The man is a jackass and a boor, as are his co-bloggers, and so are 95% of the people who comment on his site.

Dana,
Can you explain how the “Obama has found his niche” caption fits this theory?

I don’t think it does fit in with my theory. And that’s my point. Obviously it’s a racist picture and with an explicit intent to be so. But it’s much more than a racist picture – that’s the obvious dig but it’s also the easy part.

But if one looks with a less fashionable, emotional eye and with a more discerning one, it’s easy to see that coupled with that explicit intent is the more subtle yet perfectly acceptable slur: denigration of a woman. And it is acceptable and far less objectionable because the selected woman in the photo embodies the trifecta of acceptable hate in our culture today: White, Christian, and Republican.

If Hillary was the woman photoshopped in it, would it be as effective? Of course not.

I object to the lack of honesty in the arbiters righteous indignation. Either it’s all disgraceful or none of it is. One can’t pick and choose what “isms” are objectionable based simply upon what’s trendy, but if they do, I’ll just write them off as more of the shallow people pleasers that give me a headache.

A more apt photoshop would be Obama sitting at his desk, while Sarah points to a blackboard with the words, tax cuts, Afghanistan, et al. He refuses to really learn what matters and what doesn’t. She wouldn’t have waited nine months and given a half baked response on Afghanistan, or called shooting and beatings in Iran, a debate. Or continued with the TARP as it continued to be missapplied. No wonder she graded his first year as a 4.

Sometimes the left likes to make pictures of “what a right-wing racist picture might look like.” 4chan knuckleheads do it just for the excercise. Yes, CJ has been guilty of overstatement, and he may eventually learn that to exaggerate is to weaken.

If it were Biden we could say, “What do you know, Biden is fit to shine Palin’s shoes after all”. But considering the stereotype of black men as shoeshine boys — “shine” is one of the derogatory terms for black people — it is difficult to argue that it’s not racist.

Charles has exclusively turned into like some sort of weird Internet TattleTale. Does anyone remember back when he dedicated a whole post to a NY Times Reporter Making a Rookies Mistake? (I think that was the exact title). She said “Begs the question” in an incorrect usage of the term. Sure, it’s annoying although it’s pretty much accepted as tolerable b/c the misuse is so widespread.

He actually dedicated a whole post to it back when he was on the other side. He really gets his rocks off nitpicking other people. His fascination with everyone ELSE’s mental health might benefit from extending it to himself.

Charles Johnson once ran an Anti-Idiotarian website that focused on news, events and opinion from the other side of the Jihad and not reported by the MSM. Then he himself succumed to the idiocy and decided that the greatest threat to civilization was now the Creationist/Intelligent Design folk, who he imagines to comprise all Christians. No, he doesn’t matter.

Excuse me, but I briefly hijack this thread to ask where is the current college football thread. Mr. Hitchcock and other Buckeye fans want the opportunity to smile for once, not to mention the Big Ten in general- go Badgers! go Buckeyes! go Nittany Lions!… dash away, dash away, dash away all!!

JMac, Charles Johnson was/is the person behind “LGF”, or “Little Green Footballs”, a blog which was largely involved with Dan Rather’s Downfall on the fake anti-GW letter. This thread is now returned to it’s original intent.

Charles Johnson’s attitude on racism is typical for most leftists. Any display of racism is derived from the “right wing” or “white republicans”. Oppression always occurs in a neat binary opposition – some kind of corporate establishment, white men, and the rich on the other side, and suffering minorities, women, and the voiceless people on the other. There’s no deconstruction.

If you actually spend time among non whites, you’d find that not a few of them are notorious sexists, xenophobes and racists. Black vs. brown feuds (underreported by media) lead to murders and school fights all the time. The rioters sure didn’t tear apart white Beverly Hills in 92. The Korean business owners didn’t arm themselves fearing the KKK.

If the demcorat “artist” was a Mexican kid who tried to create a stir (or shock value) by creating and distributing an image that’s INTENTIONALLY racist, well, someone like Charles Johnson would still claim that it’s a right wing project. It doesn’t matter that most legitimite right wing blogs and sites don’t approve of this kind of stunt.

Another important thing that this picture clearly suggests but that Mr. Johnson ignores, is while everyone, left and right, clearly know Mr. Obama would never, ever be part and parcel of anything racist, the picture, by using Mrs. Palin in the position of power, suggests that we just don’t know about her, do we? How can we really know for sure she wouldn’t be agreeable to this? After all, she is a white, Christian, Republican…and aren’t they are all just a wee bit racist at heart?

The photo effectively begs the question (w/apologies to #63)…because we just can’t be sure, can we…and that’s what makes it doubly offensive. It’s extremely manipulative and greatly effective on several levels.

Charles suffers from President McNab syndrom. He, and the MSM, want a black man to succeed as President,as they do with McNab,that they will ignore performance.Over rated for the sakee of race. That is truely where the bigotry is.

Ever watch the movie “Enough”? Consider J-Lo’s husband in the movie the Democrat Party and consider J-Lo in the movie the Republican Party and listen to what he says to the foreigner who rescues J-Lo as she first escapes her husband.

Patterico @16 and 26 – Apparently the outrage is that this is supposed to be a photoshop of Obama shining Palin’s shoes. I just took this as a picture as Palin getting a shine from a regular guy. I did not notice any resemblance to Obama and only just returned to the thread to find that that is the controversy according to the comments and the links. Frankly, the ears are not big enough and the slope of the forehead to nose from the profile do not make it look like Obama in my view. An ordinary shoeshine shot is not racist in my view and that is what my comments were based on.

If in fact it is definitely a photoshop, the conclusion changes. It becomes poor taste at a minimum, but the “you aren’t fit to shine my shoes” insult is a time worn putdown. Would the reaction be the same if a white politician’s head had been photoshopped instead of Obama’s? I don’t think so. Are all people who shine shoes black? I don’t think so. So why is there hysteria over an alleged photoshop of Obama’s head and the stereotyping of shoe shine people as all black? Am I missing something?

Why is it racist to show the future job (only one he’s qualified for) of a lying half white/half Arab? Ain’t no black man in the cartoon, but then Islamist and other crazies will kill over a cartoon of their leaders.
The most dangerous terrorists in, and to, America are democrats.

Oh give it a break; somebody’s idea of a joke.
I could say what is Obama doing looking up her skirt? I will say that I have doubts about Obama’s ability to perform a job that doesn’t involve looking in a mirror, seeing his image, and singing “How Great Thou Art“.

Charles Johnson: I remember when his sanity was intact. He seems to suffer from a typical conversion-type zealotry where he must demonize those he left behind. By the way, I read many of the respected conservative blogs and I have never seen that photo. But I guess if it does show up on a blog of a self-described conservative that must mean all conservatives are racists. And that is supposed to pass as a logical argument?

The poorly-formed logic of Charles Johnson is revealed: his premise, without evidence, is that the picture must originate from someone political, and there are only two types of political: left-wing and right-wing. With no evidence whatsoever, he eliminates left-wing, despite the fact that there are plenty of left-wing Hillary Clinton supporters who have no love for Obama.

Why couldn’t this image have been created by a supporter of gay marriage and universal healthcare who simply loathes Obama because of how his campaign treated Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin?

What, if anything, did Charles Johnson have to say about the photoshops of Sarah Palin? The bikini and mini skirt images? Those left-wing sexists just got away with it? The horror!

By the way. We were sent the pic awhile back and I didn’t post it, not because it was racist, that didn’t really cross my mind. I didn’t post it because we aren’t pushing Palin as the viable candidate in 2012.
That’s how I perceived the pic. I thought it meant that in 2012 Obama would be shining Palin’s shoes.
“You couldn’t shine his shoes” is not a racist comment. So, we cannot use that meme in association with Obama, ever? That’s absurd. The guy happens to be black and the old “couldn’t shine his shoes” was used. Anyone seeing racism is perhaps a racist.

So what’s wrong with a picture of a man putting a little polish on a woman’s shoes?

What is racist about it? Is it somehow racist for a white person to get a shine from a person engaged in that occupation who is black? So do we now put all black shoe-shines out of business simply because to partake of their service is somehow “racist”? Can only blacks get a shine from a black person? Can only whites only get a shine from a white person?

What if a white person gives a shine to a black person? Is that also racist?

I don’t “get” the left’s preoccupation with racism and their reading it into everything.

There is an old expression, quite common when I was a child which went, “He/She isn’t fit enough to shine your/his/her shoes.” So, you could say the photo depicts that mindset.

But, on the other side, there is a New Testament story in the Gospels that tells the “shocking” tale of how Jesus washed the feet of his disciples including those of the one he knew would soon betray him. So you could look at it as another “Messiah” image. (At least it wasn’t the image of Mary Magdalene washing Jesus’ feet with her hair.)

In reality, it is a bad taste photoshop by way of the mind of an adolescent. Don’t know about anyone else, but when I think immaturity and bad taste, I think moonbat lefty.

The picture is not about race except in the mind of those who want it to be. It’s about qualifications. Just make the analogy to all the cliches, not fit to shine my shoes, not fit to clean my jock, not …….

The picture doesn’t even look like Obama on my screen, but even so, take a breath and get a grip people.

The one person who benefits from flare-ups of birther accusations, racist rants/comment threads/cartoons, reports of death threats is… President Obama. He and the left are trying to conflate the narrative of the ‘wingnut’, crazy, racist right, and therefore the left has immense incentive to propagate this narrative. The left’s understanding of the Internet, trolling blogs, and using anonymity is operative in all of these Obama as victim of racism stories. Yes, racism exists. Some on Dem side, some on GOP side. But to make it appear that the right is defined by this is Charles Johnson insanity.

Charles is creating inflamatory posts, in desperation of clicks. LGF is toast, and he knows it.

Hey man when the Left hates you because you defended Boooosh for so long and the Right hates you because you turned your back on it and started insulting it at every opportunity, well, you can only turn coats once. Chucky ain’t got a choice but to try to kiss up to the Left as hard as he can. I mean he will always have sharmuta and Kilgore Trout and his other inner circle toadies, but the tip jar needs more than that!

I hope there are zero black men in America right now working in the shoe shine industry, because if there are, they need to stop being so racist.

Now that Mr. Reynolds has linked I wonder how long it is before Chucky sends his sycophants out to scour Instapundit’s archives for hidden evidence of racism. Or Creationism. Much the same thing to Chuckles really.

Chucky ain’t got a choice but to try to kiss up to the Left as hard as he can. I mean he will always have sharmuta and Kilgore Trout and his other inner circle toadies, but the tip jar needs more than that!

Comment by chaos — 1/1/2010 @ 8:52 pm

I honestly pity those people. The mental image I have of Kilgore Trout, and other LGF followers resemble the dregs of humanity.

I wonder, when TIME had Obama on the cover as FDR, was that really a very subtle racist attack on America’s first black president?

I really think we need Chuckles to investigate this. It just seems fishy to me, portraying America’s first black president in the mold of a crippled man. We need Chuckles’ tireless investigative ethic and his lightning-quick intellect to unravel this mystery.

For a long time now, it felt like somebody had kidnapped Charles Johnson, some maniacal Dkos diarist maybe, posting in his stead while he remains tied up in a closet. I’ve read some explanation that his “politics” were always questionable, but I realize now what it is that makes him feel like a completely different person. It’s not the politics, it’s the seeming absence of logic and evidence that used to practically *define* him.

The Charles Johnson of the past may have followed evidence of memo forgery against CBS *or* Fox News, fine — but here, we see how the new Charles Johnson simply points fingers and simply *ignores* evidence, time and again. It’s as if Sherlock Holmes turned into the Angry Guy Ranting on the Bus. If the politics of this story were reversed, it would make no difference: it’s still a Charles Johnson who, unlike the old Charles Johnson, simply cannot be bothered with petty details like facts.

Too funny, posters 103 and 104! That whole vibe at LGF reminds me of a scene out of Frank Zappa’s “200 Motels” movie: Flo and Eddie in drag playing PlasterCasters who gaze disapprovingly and then sneer ‘eight inches or less” at all the males who enter their domain.

It really says something about a man that he’s so sensitive that he would make a blog post about a random image made by a random guy on the internet mocking him… and spend that entire post insulting this guy who he didn’t even know existed and who obviously got waaaay under his skin (to the point where Chuckles’ little minions in the comments are actually offering to go look around the internet and find out who this “bigfurhat” is).

The best explanation I can think of for what’s happened to Johnson is he must be sleeping with Andrew Sullivan. I stopped reading Johnson’s blog quite a while ago when I detected the taint setting in, just as I did with Andrew’s back in the day.

I told him he could delete my account when I realised I was reading stories that I could get on daily kos..He didn’t actually delete the account then but the post was deleted by the time I refreshed at like one in the morning. . He used to be a bastion to expose violence of radical islam, and how Israel is always getting screwed; now he posts photoshops that 98% of conservatives would condemn to say “See, conservatives are rascists!”; He exposed a lot of left wing propaganda before when there was no one else to do it.This kinda of reporting has a niche; its msnbc and people like that. Thats my only problem with him..To flip like that; I lost my respect for him, which was a lot.

Yes, I’m conservative, but it seems his posts morphed from an anti-ID minor to an anti-conservative major with Israel going down the drain in just a few months. I miss the guy.

oh right: only depictions of our current president that are assumed to have been created by the right-wing are racist. these were just on-point visual criticisms of a member of the bush administration. she’s not really black anyway, right?

I think that chaos @ 4:47 pm and 4:54 pm has it right. This was shopped and sent by an Ombama supporter as a criticism of him for not being partisan enough. To them, he’s acting like an Uncle Tom. Sarah is the embodiment of those nasty, bad Republicans.

I think it’s significant that they chose a woman to be the “Republican” in this photoshop. To these Democrats, it’s even worse that Obama is behaving in a subservient manner to a female Republican.

Their choice of Sarah is, in part, an expression of their contempt for females who wander off the liberal “reservation”.

The extent of CJ’s involvement in the 60 Minutes case was copying the “evidence” from the CBS website, creating a document in MS Word, and putting both into a GIF image which alternated between the two in a digital form of superimposition, which illustrated the document in question was created in a modern word processing program, not on an IBM typewriter 30-odd years before.

What he has done with this picture illustrates the “straw man” fallacy of logical argument. CJ assumes the origin of the photoshop was a “right wing site,” supports his contention with his own unsupported statement he found it on “right wing” sites but not on leftist ones, without naming names, supplying links, or even defining his terms. And he expects the reader to accept this as incontrovertibly true without any hint of doubt.

Of course, if your readers have the average brain size of a small reptile, the last expectation might not be unreasonable.

Still, pointing out the aberrant behaviors of someone who obviously has some “issues” and whose condition seems to be deteriorating before our very monitors seems rather cruel and uncaring, like poking a caged beast with a stick.

No one here is behaving like a victim, libarbarian @ 10:01 pm. The photoshop is simply a Democrat’s criticism of Obama for, in their view, acting in a slavish manner towards Republicans.

Of course, a pedant like Charles Johnson would take this as a purely racist depiction of Obama, because, well, that’s what Charles does. To him everything which depicts Barack Obama in a negative light is racist. And anyone who either criticises Obama or agrees with that criticism, is a racist. By his definition, racist=Republican.

Charles has been banging his sippy cup on his high chair about this kind of thing for so long, and so hysterically, that his shrieks of racism hold little currency amongst those who retain the ability to think critically.

Is it a racist depiction of Obama? Sure looks like it to me. Was it meant to be that? I don’t know. The person who shopped it may just have meant to zing Obama for perceived “subservience” to Republicans (whom the photoshopper dislikes). he/she may well have put a white guy’s face in there, had the president been a white Democrat.

I think that the choice of Sarah as the Republican in this little tableau may well be significant. To the photoshopper, this may be the absolute worst person to be “subservient” to. A woman who is not a Democrat!! gasp. There may well be some sexist overtones there.

99.The one person who benefits from flare-ups of birther accusations (is)..Obama

Are you saying people should lie and pretend Obama is a natural born citizen or else Obama will benefit by having pro-Constitution Americans pointing out the truth that Obama is a usurper and not a natual born citizen? How do you figure?

Are you saying people should lie and pretend Obama is a natural born citizen or else Obama will benefit by having pro-Constitution Americans pointing out the truth that Obama is a usurper and not a natual born citizen? How do you figure?

*sigh*

If Obama was not a natural-born citizen we’d have found out by now. When Tom Hayden is throwing you under the bus… well, if there was a conspiracy by the rich and powerful of the Left regarding one Barack Hussein Obama, I’m pretty sure that their disgust with him at this point means that… yeah. His citizenship credentials are fine. He’s just an incompetent tool.

Having participated at LGF in the initial months following 9/11 and through the Bush Memo heydays, I see Johnson’s crackup over the last couple of years has been almost as complete and even more perplexing than Andrew Sullivan’s descent into madness.

Johnson has turned into a modern day Captain Queeg, absent the strawberries and the metal bearings.

He grew tireseome with his constant harping on the birth certificate issue, insufferable in his jihad against the creationists, and absolutely batsh*t insane over AGW, completing a transformation into Dan Rather’s image, wildly defending “fake but accurate” AGW alarmists caught red-handed.

He’s simply substituted ‘racist’ for ‘Nazis’, and is playing his tired old schtick for another self-righteous lap.

The ultra-haters who have Obama-derangement-syndrome will love the knife-in-the-gut reaction from Obama supporters.

The Leftys will love the reaction the image gets their side: “Arrrrhhhh!! No!No!NO!!!!! We must stop the advance of the Right or that is what will happen, the ascendancy of that DAMNED Palin over all that is just and true – personified by OBama! BACK TO THE BARRICADES!

Like many, I used to enjoy LGF. Not certain the time line on the change, but – what an incredible change. I never posted much there, but several months ago, I literally was banned for asking some straightforward questions. No foul language, no insults, etc.

It seems that if you don’t follow the “party line” and kow-tow to King Charles – then you are quickly going to be banished. Contradict anything that the sycophants worship, and your account is not long for this world.

I know some other liberals whose behavior mirrors this. They seem to believe that fabricating acts and beliefs to others – then being highly critical of same – is great sport.

To me, and apparently to many others, it’s merely parochial, pathetic and sophomoric.

So, is it also a right wing thing to bash women? After all, the left constantly paints itself as pro-woman, inferring that since they have crowned themselves thusly, the opposition must hate women.

I ask because as I recall, the right loved Sarah Palin, while the left was trashing Hillary Clinton (er, and Sarah Palin) in transparently misogynistic ways.

(I also recall Condi Rice polling fairly well among the right, though her connection to the Iraq campaign was seen negatively; she’s twice the woman Hillary Clinton is, twice the man Barack Obama is, and also twice as black.)

By Johnson’s inverted logic where you begin with your bias and proceed to the conclusion you hope for, we must assume that the originator of the misogyny used by the Obama campaign was not the Obama campaign itself, but that they merely borrowed it from the right.

Clever those Rovians; fixing against Hillary, who actually had some experience and some form of filter in a year when Republicans were well behind, so we could elect an obnoxious red-daiper baby with delusions of philosopher-kingship.

The funny thing about Charles Johnson is that he likes to portray himself as an independent thinker, yet he went from completely right to completely left on almost every issue. He didn’t just abandon a few rightwing beliefs or adopt a couple of leftwing beliefs, nope he went all in. It doesn’t seem intellectually honest to me, which is why I suspect his real intent was simply to cash in. Well good luck to him, viva capitalism and all that. But he’s got to be the early frontrunner for 2010 Idiotarian of the Year.

The joke is obviously about Obama bowing to the GOP which Palin seems to be leading right now (and was leading back in 2008 if this pic was indeed created then). The creator of this piece seems to wish he would stand up to her. Which he has, but he loses on substance time and again.

Anyway, this reminds me of the the billboard of Jesse Jackson (no relation) in DC a few of decades ago (80’s?). It was an artist’s depiction of him as blond and blue-eyed and had the caption ‘how you like me now?’. Some people climbed up and destroyed the billboard they were so incensed on Jackson’s behalf. But the artist was actually a supporter who’d meant to say that Jesse Jackson would have a lot more clout if he were white. Watching Jackson and various other leaders of color twist themselves up to absolve the destroyers as well as support the artist was amusing to say the least.

Charles Johnson would have climbed up to that billboard to destroy it. Subtlety is lost on him as he sees smears, racism and attacks of all kinds behind ever post. (Except for the sexist kind. And anti-Christian bigotry. Those attacks are okay.)

Anyway, this is my first time posting here, but I really think the intent to criticize Obama from the left is obvious in this photoshop. That it was picked up by some right wing sites misreading it might be a different story, but the original intent, to me anyway, is pretty clear.

Jackson, you’re right. This doesn’t make any sense from a ‘conservative’ POV. That’s not to say that conservatives aren’t amused at the idea of Obama being unpopular or laughed at. Or that some on the right are racist (as many on the left are).

Charles Johnson had a point he could have made, but he’s not in the business of actually using reason or trying to influence people… it’s just attack attack attack, so he has to obnoxiously insist this is proof of racism across a broad swath of people who didn’t have much to do with the comic in the first place.

Also, while I can see why it seems racist, it’s not obvious to me. Palin is white and Obama is of mixed race, and Obama is the worker here… but there are many cases where a minority is working out there in the real world. Is there really anything wrong with that? Is there something stereotypically bigoted about shining shoes? Maybe there is, but it seems like this comic would have worked just as well (not that it was very funny) with a white person shining Palin’s shoes.

Is it simply racist to make fun of Obama? He’s a weird guy who is incoherent. Palin’s made a fool of him in a couple of instances. It’s fun to sit on a high horse and condemn everything, but I think that’s the beginning and ending of Charles’s reasoning.

I dropped off of reading political blogs for 2 years, and came back recently. I used to frequent LGF. What happened to Charles? He seems to’ve stepped neck deep into the very same fervered swamps he used to expose.

For a great many of us, “racist!” is the new “Nazi!” It has lost all meaning and its users have lost all credibility. And some of us now ignore Johnson the way we ignore Sullivan. They are charicaturing themselves.

So Obama is depicted as running his own business, delivering a service his clients find useful, and Palin is portrayed as getting someone else to do the dirty work.
Neither of these portrayals convinces me.

The images does evoke the phrase ‘not being fit to shine their shoes’ in which the one who is doing the shining is not of the same standing (usually social) of those who’s shoes they are shining. Growing up with family descended from Poland I heard that phrase a few times, not pointed at blacks but used as a generalized term for someone who doesn’t have the mental capacity of the person who’s shoes they would be shining. If you grew up with a Dumb Polska background this is something you also find used to refer to Polish descendents.

This was one of two related phrases that a few of my older Aunts and Uncles used, particularly my Uncle Joe. The other that is related to it is less common, but used in a similar fashion about mental capacity: ‘He can’t tell s**t from Shinola.’ Which became a common term during the 1930’s to 1950’s, due to the nature of the shoe polish involved.

While the first one is invoked directly, the second one lacks only a can of Shinola in the shoe-shine kit. Those with a walkaround shoe-shine kit in the 1930’s were usually children or men down on their luck looking to earn any money in an earnest fashion. Although popular media of the time may capture more blacks than whites doing this sort of job, non-staged media inside train stations, street scenes, etc. during normal working hours indicates that this was not a job done solely by blacks or even by adults.

To me, as a racist commentary, the picture fails.

As a commentary on mental fitness and capacity it does have validity in my eyes.

For showing the thin skin of the modern Left the image has astounding utility pointing out how they are not part of a ‘post-racial America’ and more than ready to jump at anything as ‘racist’.

I know racism… the KKK burned a cross on my lawn in 1960. In the last 20 years, I’ve met VERY few openly racist conservatives. (There was this one barber who wanted to abort black babies, but other than that, I can’t think of any.)

Liberals don’t THINK of themselves as racist, because they say “prejudice + power = racism.” Since they view themselves as powerless, they cannot be guilty of racism. That sets them free to try to achieve power by any means available–including stigma and scorn.

When liberals use words and images to try to change the behavior of their opponents, it doesn’t matter whether the opponents are white or black. If the opponents are white, they get called “Hitler” or “fascist.” If they’re black, it’s “Uncle Tom” or “Aunt Jemima.”

I can’t see any valid “right wing” reading of this photoshop either. If it is, I suspect that it was planted the way the “iron my shirts” chant was planted in Hillary’s crowd during the primaries. Or it is from some kind of fluke nutcase.

From the left, however, this photoshop makes perfect sense as a criticism of Obama’s weak and ineffectual reaction to Palin’s criticism of his plan to control health care delivery politically. Then again, I suppose that it could be read as racist gloating by the right, but that seems like a stretch.

Either way, the country is stuck with this ineffectual nebbish of a president.

It’s funny, I haven’t even thought of LGF for over a year until I read this article. I used to read it faithfully and found it to be very good with its mid-east focus. Then, in what seemed to me to be non-sequitorious posts about creationism and ID, I got annoyed with the site and stopped reading it, as I question the proposition that life spontaneously generated. I didn’t know Charles had gone so far off the deep end. It is sad that this has happened. Looks like he’s another Andrew Sullivan now, a person for whom there are a lot of people who used to read their blog.

Looks to me like another classic ‘see how racist they are!’ image, created by dems for dems to prove repubs are racists.

they try and try to find actual things like this that right wingers created for the enjoyment of other evil racist right wingers, but as always, they don’t find anything like that. So they make it themselves and share a laugh over how racist we are.

I’ll await evidence that this is anything other than another self-fulfilling liberal claim of conservative racism.

Mike K (#9) and I feel the same way about LGF. Just as Sullivan went mad with torture and gay marriage, Johnson became deranged with creationism. It got boring fast, even though at its core I agree with the guy.

Who in that picture has a long history of race baiting? Who in that picture has a long history of being present for racial diatribes against Jews and whites? Who in the photo cries “racism” when a white criticizes him? Oh, wait I just gave it away.

Obama’s past can’t be photoshopped.

Perhaps this photo expresses the view that Obama is asking Palin for foregiveness.

He calls this Photoshop “racist.” I wonder if readers here agree with him.

I think that people need to get a sense of humor. I’m not a fan of either of the people in the picture but I found it amusing. As for “racism” – it’s the stupidest concept ever to preoccupy the mind of a nation.

This is such a waste of time. Most of what Johnson posts is a waste now – LGF used to be on my everyday bookmarks list, now it’s not on the list at all, because it became so pointless to read this man’s petty and whining rants.

Yeah, the pic could be racist. But who created it and why, we have no idea. All we KNOW is that a Democrat forwarded it. I’m so tired of ignorant, knee-jerk types like Johnson reflexively blaming right-wingers for everything that offends them. it’s so…….lazy.

I’ve read all the comments this time and it seems that what the “picture is racist crowd” is saying is that you can’t compare Obama, by either metaphor, simile or allusion, to a shoe shine man, or to any anthropoid species (other than homo sapiens), or to any other human (except a clearly superior one; well, the above photo achieves one criteria after all).

The common thread here is that if the comparison is unflattering to Obama it is racist. Which is another way of saying, “shut the fuck up”.

Would it be racist to show a picture of a young Obama, with golf club in hand, pouting,stamping his foot and saying that, “I don’t want to fight terrorists, I want to play golf!”

Yes, because the photo would be showing a black man as a boy! Not an immature, self absorbed narcissist, who doesn’t give a shit about the people whose government he heads. That, they would say, is just a distraction. And racist!

One way of explaining Obama’s appointments is that he feels very uncomfortable with people of genuine accomplishment and ability, which is why such people are so notably lacking in his appointments, and in his administration.

Umm.. being familar with Instapundit’s dry sense of humor, I don’t think Glenn was serious about the “racist” tag. He was actually making fun of Charles Johnson, whose writings have become increasingly desperate and bizarre.

Chuckie is obviously experiencing cognitive dissonance. He has this deep-rooted obsession with Obama, bordering on the unhealthy, and anything that interferes with his worship causes a strange reaction from him. Reading his blog reminds one of Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar”. He really is getting that weird.

When I look at that picture, I do not see a racial context. What I see is a representation of Palin’s ability to make Obama react to her by coming out and making statements in response to her Facebook or Twitter commets. Her “death panel” comment is a prime example.

Chuckie Johnson’s real problem, I think, is that it was a Democrat who was forwarding the picture around, revealing the increasingly numerous and deep fissures in the Obama base support.

Chuckie’s nothing but one of the brain dead Obama cultists and just is unable to accept that everyone else does not feel the same way about him

This pic is a disservice to shoe shines — white and black alike — everywhere. The guys who are good at it should take pride in their work. They show hustle are some of the ultimate entrepreneurs. Obama wouldn’t know the first thing to do with a shoe shine kit, aside from tax it. Or claim it was racist.

Chuckles is an idiot. He got lucky once when he made the two image gif animation. It only occured to him to do that after seeing ten other people point out how it was set on standard Microsoft tabs. So he even had to steal the idea to do the one thing that ever brought him fame.

Who cares what the silly fart says about anything. You know up front it will be a painfully obvious lie and that any discussion will cause instant banning.

Why is the photo ‘racist’?

I have to say it is inappropriate because Obama has never worked that hard in his life.

But ‘racist’? How about if Obama was a dentist working on Palin’s teeth? Would that be ‘racist’ too?

Would it be ‘racist’ if Palin were shining the shoes? If so, does that mean that any picture of people of two different races is ‘racist’?

These silly accusations of racism come pretty fast and loose from Barry and his socialist supporters. If you disagree with Barry’s policies then you are a ‘racist’.

I do not think that word means what Chuckles (or Barry) thinks it means.

There used to be a saying, “He/she is not fit to shine his/her shoes”. It had nothing to do with racism, but more to do with the quality of the persons one was speaking of. Depends on the intent. Just as some see zero racism, some see racism in everything.

The picture is racist, sure, because it plays on racial stereotypes. But it could as easily be a hard-left image as hard-right, as a symbol of what, to them, is Obama’s surrendering to the “Reich wing” (say, on Afghanistan).

Some images, like the ones I’ve seen depicting Obama as Little Black Sambo or Stepin Fetchit, are blatantly racist. But Obama’s supporters are expanding the definition of racism to include anything that even questions Obama’s competence, regardless of whether it contains any racial imagery or not. And some stuff falls into a gray zone, such as, say, depicting Obama as a chimpanzee – an image that has been used to insult blacks, but has also also widely applied to whites, including Abraham Lincoln and George W. Bush.

It’s worth noting that the image also insults Palin, by implying that she’s some sort of racist. Say what you like about her qualifications for high office, but she, like John McCain, is no racist.

But in the end, Patterico is right: no fair-minded person would regard this image as funny or telling. Getting into a spitting match over it with a fool like Charles Johnson is a waste of time.

I think if you took any photo with two people interacting and superimposed the faces of any two politicians, somebody will find a way to call it racist. It doesn’t matter if the politicians are the same or different as far as party, race, gender, religion, or whatever. Think for a second if it had been Nancy Pelosi instead of President Obama. How long would it take for someone to claim that since “everybody knows*” shoeshiners are mostly black, it was the equivalent of calling Pelosi an n-word?

*I don’t even know if that’s true because I shined my own boots, but someone would claim it’s common knowledge like “shine” meaning black person.

Considering the caption that Patterico mentioned, I’m with the “not fit to shine shoes” riff. Seems to say that President Obama IS fit to shine Palin’s shoes, but not much more than that… hence, he’s found his niche. That doesn’t mean that the person who did the Photoshop is a racist or that the picture itself is inherently so.

If Charles “Charlatan” Johnson is so sure that this photo is originated on some Right-Wing Website, why doesn’t he apply his super powers to find the original release? I mean, really, he is a super-duper rock, er I mean jazz star or something.

Well, the truth is, he can’t. He is a feckless, talentless, psychopath. His 0.15 minutes of fame guessing a font size on some letter back in the Bush years got him some noteriety, but unfortunately it was short lived. Remember, he hates Bush, always did. The sudden “Hey, look what I noticed when I played around with my Word program!” got him some kudos from the Right. He solved a problem and got Rather tossed (finally!) from a career. But this obviously bothered Charles. It sat in the depths of his files constantly throwing him into fits of rage.

His awakening was with Obama’s election. I remember reading posts from his site as the election drew nearer. He was praying for the Repbulicans to lose. I am sure he has deposited all of those posts into the trash can, just like everyone elses comments.

Hey, what’s the difference between Charles Johnson and the old KGB ministry of re-information? The KGB worker actually knew what he was doing and did not pretend to be a “jazz player”.

I, too, am a member of the Banned From LGF club. It happened a couple of years ago. I don’t remember exactly what it was that I wrote that provoked the banning, but I do remember being surprised because it was so innocuous.

I made a comment to rebut something Chuckie said…and then *poof*…I was gone.

The first thought I had was “who is going to repair her shoes after he ruins them.”

The second thought consisted of just two words, “piss Christ.”

I gotta say, Charlie is scraping the bottom of the barrel for issues these days. We all know Obama was helped immensely in his quest to be president by virtue of being half black. That is where the real and obvious racism is in America these days.

The pic is a joke, a visual gag, the overt message of which is political. It counterpoints BHO’s arrogance with his incompetence. The One, the Messiah, the Savior of Us All is in reality a bumbling idiot unworthy to perform anything but the lowliest of tasks in the real world. He has been hyped way above his competence. Palin, on the hand, has been portrayed in the MSM as a doofus, an incoherent, barely literate, beauty queen airhead; an example white trailer park trash who rose beyond her station in a Godforsaken backwater because of her unreconstructed primitivism and simple-minded Bible-thumping. The pic portrays the exact opposite: a sophisticated, classy, modern, urban lady of undoubted charm and style, intelligent and capable.

The gag plays on this role reversal to great effect. It is pointed and funny.

The pic is also ineluctably racist. It is also classist, but the former enfolds the latter. Shoeshining is in itself a menial occupation, conjuring up, as it does, obeisance before the throne. A kind of functional, as opposed to ceremonial, groveling. This is repugnant to the modern Western sensibility, especially if the shoe shine is of a traditionally despised group.

Thus, while being exposed politically as an overblown incompetent, Obama is also put in his place as a Black Man, not the enraged, frightening, ticking bomb of today’s Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam but rather the meek, servile, eager-to-please Rochester (“Yessir, Mr. Benny”) of yesteryear. He becomes the stereotypical traditional Negro who knows his place and is content to play his allotted role. A useful cog in the machine, not a bloody great spanner in the works.

The power of the image – and it is a work of expert propaganda – derives from this. It is a comforting reconstruction of a more ordered, more hierarchical social dispensation, grounded in unquestioned social and moral certainties that were accepted by all but a radical fringe who then were politically impotent, though intellectuaaly industrious in undermining truths which were then thought eternal.

It is, therefore, as I have said, ineluctably racist but it is also an exercise in wistfulness because in this day and age genuine racism can function – if at all – only as nostalgia.

The traditional dispensation has now been turned on its head. The Negro is now the President. The white lady is no longer a delicate southern belle but rather a crude uppity female member of a socially despised group trying ludicrously to rise above her allotted station.

So, the pic is still funny. Humor is ever subversive. And subversiveness, we were told constantly – at least until Obama’s elevation – is the highest of intellectual virtues and an essential ingredient of true democracy.

We must perforce conclude that this pic is a healthy contribution to political debate.

This is just more liberal guilt-mongering as their pot calls our kettle black. If the Left hadn’t been so sexist against Palin in ’08 and jaw-droppingly vicious toward her little baby boy, perhaps they would have something to contribute to the discourse. As it stands, however, this just one more case of American liberals screaming “do as I say, don’t do as I do.” The truth hurts, and it is right here that Mad King Charles is more sensitive than most.

I stopped reading LGF when all the dumb bike photos and Manhattan Beach sunsets started to dominate. I’m surprised that it’s still around.

IIRC, the shoe shiners in Manhattan are an exclusive group. I don’t think they would let Obama join. But, as I said, the photoshop is obviously political commentary and, even the Democrat who created it was not a racist. They had a point they were trying to make and knee jerk reaction has buried it.

I worry about CJ, actually. He might hate this, but I pray for him. Not for him to see my point of view, but since he seems a bit shrill and unhinged, I pray for him to have a peaceful heart.

Charles did more than just the TANG memo thing. He was a great source for information about what was happening in the Middle East. He was also quite good at exposing Democrat perfidy, as he was a great supporter of our troops. I think he still supports the troops, but just no longer as fervently. Which is telling. He’s after a different audience these days and he’s getting them.

Has anyone ever noticed that the LGF donate button grows larger and larger as the blog goes further and further left? You used to not even be able to find the tip jar.

Regardless, he gets a lot of traffic from these little online tiffs. I like it better when everyone ignores him like the batty uncle in the room over the garage.

I AM black, and while I acknowledge that shoe shiners in the past have been depicted as poor, black, “inferior” men shining the shoes of the more “superior” white man, I did NOT see racism in this photo.

I think the photo represents the comparison of qualifications, Obama vs. Palin, as their qualifications and experience to govern were such a hot topic during the campaign.

To me, the photo is saying that the only thing Obama is qualified to do is shine the shoes of the one who is truly more qualified and experienced. Not because he’s black, but because he is UNDER QUALIFIED.

I am not a Palin supporter, but any fool, black or white, can compare experience and find his lacking.

LGF made an unfounded comment about a DC think tank I used to work at and when I told him the people I worked with there had little interest in where the money came from and were authentic free marketeers, he banned me and called me a shill. It was the second comment I had made at LGF in about 5 years. And I used to read LGF virtually every day. My emails to him went unanswered. He has become quite intellectually dishonest.

I find this picture highly offensive… to all qualified shoe shine workers, whether russian, black or other race or ethnicity… as their profession requires a pursuit of excellence and a level of attention to detail which Barry clearly does not possess…

[…] unhinged post called What Right Wing Racism? (Does posting the picture make Chucky a racist?) Well, Patterico PWNS Excitable Chucky when he found a cute little tidbit According to voting records, the woman is […]

The shoe-shine picture is stupidly not funny. Obama is incapable of doing anything correctly on his own volition, including shining his own shoes. Reference the First Family’s first family interview including the girls; Michelle said that B+rry can’t even dress himself with a matching pair of socks.

Jesus washing the feet of his 12 disciples taught that he who is least is greatest; humility is a virtue. Obama claims to be Christian, and shouldn’t take offense at a lame joke, especially after having called his own grandmother who raised him in affluence “a typical white woman” racist. That Obama’s thugs would persecute an old white Democrat lady for being dumb enough to use her government job email to share an idiotic message is a sign of the Marxist times of intolerance.

/btw, The only people who care about Charles Johnson are those still posting at LGF.

You’re being black is relevant only if you cry racism; you instantly forfeit group membership if you are NOT offended; your views are then dismissed as race treachery, Uncle Tomery, Aunt Jemimary or whatever is the Liberal insult de jour for being insufficiently Pavlovian.

If the first thing you think when you see a black man shining shoes or otherwise gainfully wearing a blue collar is that this is typical black lowness, you’ve got a problem. I’m looking at you, Charles.

I am pretty sure that fry cooks, shoe shiners, soldiers, truck drivers, and all that are not race related at all. Obama is black, and if he’s lampooned in a cartoon, that’s automatically about his race in the heads of people who don’t understand how irrelevant his blackness is.

It is a meaningless symbol which people feel compelled to invest with meaning. The explanations they construct, rather than revealing the meaning of the picture, only reveal the things that are inside their heads.

If the first thing you think when you see a black man shining shoes or otherwise gainfully wearing a blue collar is that this is typical black lowness, you’ve got a problem. I’m looking at you, Charles.

I don’t think that’s fair. It’s not a photo of a black man shining shoes. It’s a photo of a white guy shining shoes, which has been Photoshopped into a depiction of a black President shining shoes.

The idea that this is a racially charged image is not at all an idea held only by crazies. Someone took Obama’s image and chose this picture to ‘shop it in. I think it’s a fair question to ask why.

Where I take issue with Johnson is in his assumption, without proof, that it was a right-winger who did it. We don’t know that. We do know that some racist right-wingers have gleefully reproduced it. I have a link in the post that proves that.

But for all I know, it was a leftist who produced it to begin with. Maybe even a Hillary supporter.

I’ve always been wary of middle-aged men with pony tails. Just not my kind of guys. Johnson is so eaten up with political correctness that he doesn’t make sense. Any joke or criticism of Obama is immediately called racism. Johnson is worse than Al Sharpton. At least Sharpton doesn’t have that pathetic pony tail.

[…] reporting. Like many leftists Charles believes that by labeling websites (even when the facts don’t back him up) you neuter their arguments. Of course, this is not true. Leftists like Charles believe if you […]

“I don’t think that’s fair. It’s not a photo of a black man shining shoes. It’s a photo of a white guy shining shoes, which has been Photoshopped into a depiction of a black President shining shoes.

The idea that this is a racially charged image is not at all an idea held only by crazies. Someone took Obama’s image and chose this picture to ’shop it in. I think it’s a fair question to ask why.” -Patterico

There was a white man with Obama superimposed over him… I don’t really follow why that makes this more likely to be racist. Obama’s black.

I grant the point about normal people seeing racism here, and I guess the only way I understand this is because the comic doesn’t have much of a meaning. It may mean Obama isn’t standing up to Palin, but he has done nothing for her, ever, so the comic is just making him look like a servant.

But how everyone and their dog is a racist whenever anything critical is mentioned of anyone who isn’t white… that’s Charles’s posture lately. Hell, you’re racist if you are friends with someone who ran into someone who posted something on a website that had something racist on it. That snap to racism is just strange to me.

I guess my point boils down to: how is it so clear this is racism if it makes just as much sense with the politicians reversed?

I should say that Patterico is only saying you’re not a kook to see racism here… which is different from saying this is clearly racism (which is what I find odd). Charles goes much further than even that. It’s evidence that an entire movement has a problem, to him.

Earlier today, in his comments on the Underwear Bomber, President Obama stated : “We know that he traveled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty … “.

It may be fascinating to speculate about the reasons why Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab became radicalized, but “crushing poverty” was probably not one of them. I’m sure the President would agree, if he were asked directly. But in the back of Barack’s mind, the two things are inextricably linked.

And, FWIW, that last sentence is yet one more example of the principle: people believe what they want to believe.

Here is the last word, and what makes Charles Johnson a huge lunkhead.
If he sees a white guy shining shoes he must say to himself, “gee, look at that white guy doing what a black guy normally does.”
And when he sees a black guy shining shoes he says, “ahhhh, all is right with the world.”
Johnson, you are a Johnson. I didn’t think you would “get” why I put you in the shoe shine picture and asked “is this racism?” Your answer to the question displayed the deep thinking normally associated with … umm.. umm… Charles Johnson.

Original photo and article
I am the photographer who took the original capture. The photograph presented here is an unauthorized plagiarism. I resent anyone using my copyrighted photographs without my consent in the first place and even more so bringing an undeserved infamy to my name by altering them and using with ill intend. I am an Australian photographer and American politics are as far away from my mind as are our countries. Is this racism? I am not sure, but it is THEFT and DEFAMATION for sure.

Claiming someone is racist because of political affiliation is ignorant and bigoted.

Ted Szukalski was just trying to make a living. And, he’s seen his livelihood and art usurped by small, vile little vermin who exist to score cheap, vindictive points on a scoreboard that only counts in Hell.

Mr. Szukalski: I can’t apologize for what has happened to your photo, I can only express my sympathy for its corruption and thank you for taking the time to defend yourself here.

I hope our News Junkie will be able to get back from the north country tomorrow, because we are tiring of covering the links for him. Will stagger on just one more day.
Vanderleun: What I learned from Avatar
Getting old and sick? 2010 is the rig…

I don’t think BO is worthy to shine her shoes. No racism involved at all, I dislike him as he is a socialist at best, communist at worst and most likely in my opinion. Those who are sure all criticism of BO has to racism is paying more attention to his color than I am. Heck, he is more white than black, his father was part Arab, not all what one considers African American. I feel BO and the great O have a future praising each other and hopefully it can start in earnest in three years after he joins the unemployment line.

I linked to this Post, along with a couple of others – and I also received a comment from the Photographer who took the original photo – as I see you have, above. I did take the (photoshopped) image down – I respect his rights as an artist.

BUT – at this point that image (not his original photo, but the altered image), and the assertions people have made surrounding it, have become a legitimate story. For example, the links included above traced the story to the first appearance of the altered image.

At some point, censoring the altered image is a bad thing. It is part of a national dialogue, good bad or indifferent. About racism, about experience, about fights between bloggers… you have to show the image in order to have the discussion.
**********

I also recommend this link ◼ The Shoeshine Photo…The picture was actually created back during the last presidential campaign to emphasize the fact that Sarah Palin had more executive experience than Barack Obama….

[…] Governor Rod Blagojevich has opened his noise-hole. “I’m blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little Laundromat in a black community not far […]

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